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Learned to program when I was around five or six years old, by picking up a book of prewritten programs in BASIC for a Sinclair ZX80 (or ZX81? not sure), figuri
by Eliezer 16y ago
Learned to program when I was around five or six years old, by picking up a book of prewritten programs in BASIC for a Sinclair ZX80 (or ZX81? not sure), figuring out how they worked and writing my own.
I am not sure what the term "inherently hard" is supposed to mean in this context.
- chopsueyar 16y agoI assume as a 5 or 6 year old, you did not have as many responsibilities or obligations as an older person. Perhaps if you had not learned until later in life, the learning curve would be steeper?
- devilant 16y agoCome on. I think the context is pretty clear. If a group of novelists are discussing how writing is inherently hard, would you let them know you don't understand how they can say writing is hard? After all, you learned how to write when you were five or six by picking up "See Spot Run" and then stringing together some nouns and verbs of your own...
- Jach 16y agoIf something is "inherently hard", not just "hard", it seems that it should be hard for everyone, which is clearly not the case with programming for some geniuses out there. There are people who don't blink an eye at mastering any data structure or algorithm, don't sweat when it comes to actually coding, and they're human just like you. Plus what if programming became really simple for some AI to do? You ask it "Make me a triple-A style video game I might enjoy" and it does so after a short while. I believe Eliezer is pointing out that programming being inherently hard is a mind-projection fallacy.